My Only Sunshine
by x. I Got You First .x
Summary: [POST AVENGERS: ENDGAME! MAJOR SPOILERS!] A girl has a secret. It has nothing to do with cheeseburgers or knowing swear words too early.


Morgan had a secret.

She remembered her first cheeseburger. She was four and a half, and her father had taken her into the nearest city. Spying Burger King on the right, she pressed her palms and fingertips and nose against the car window, eyes wide in wonderment. Her eyes widened furthermore when the car veered into the drive and parked in the front of the squat, beige building. She jumped out of the car and took her father's hand. With too much energy to boot, Morgan bounced on her toes the whole walk inside. She asked what this was about – she only ever left their safe, lakeside space for school (in which she was far more advanced than her peers already) – but Tony only smiled and mentioned something about a treat, and a promise. Something was off, she could tell. She wanted to ask what it was, but when she brought it up, he diverted her attention with a quip about the food. She never learned then why he had to go away. She never understood then why he couldn't come back.

Although she never told Happy about that moment when he took his six-year-old goddaughter for her "first" cheeseburger, that wasn't the secret (only something to giggle about with Rhodey when Happy came in the room).

She remembered "shit". Her dad never could censor himself around her. Mom said that so often, Morgan couldn't be sure if the images in her head were real or just a creation of her overactive brain. When someone said "shit", the form of a man leaning over the back of a chair came to her. She'd be sitting on the steps, much smaller in body, and giggling at the face of her father. _Only mommy can say that_, she remembered him say, but then he went on to say it, anyway.

Although she never _told_ mommy she knew "shit", that wasn't her big secret. Part of her suspected that Mommy already knew.

She remembered digging into the floorboards one night. Ten years old and Mom was in the kitchen fixing dinner for the two of them. The call of '_Five minutes!'_ sounded from over the couch and by the stove. Morgan tossed back an '_Okay, mommy!'_ but continued digging at the floorboard she had noticed to be loose.

_Crack!_ The floorboard lifted. Morgan tossed a wary glance over her shoulder, but Mommy didn't seem to notice. She turned to the boards again. Her eager hands scraped at the surrounding ones to widen the available space.

_Blue?_ she saw. Confusion laced her thoughts, and her eyebrows furrowed accordingly. _And a glint of gold_. She fit her fingers on either side of the blue-and-gold orb and wriggled it out of the hole.

_What was it?_ Morgan turned it around and was greeted by a face. A gold face with a neutral expression made by two dark eye-holes and a facial slit. Morgan traced the facial slit, guessing that was where the helmet split to reveal the person underneath. She flipped the helmet over and studied the cave in which a head would fit.

_Daddy! _She squealed a little, earning a glance from Mom over in the kitchen. Too excited to contain it, Morgan fumbled with the helmet when settling it over her head. The piece of tech was too big for her so it wobbled on her head, but a voice suddenly sprang to life and an aquamarine light filled her eyes.

_Stark secure server: Accepted_, a cool, disembodied voice said. Before her eyes, a hospital bed. Mom sat there, or at least Morgan assumed it was her mother– The helmet was gone before she had the opportunity to be certain, ripped from her head. She wheeled around in alarm to see Mom – the _real_ Mom – bearing over her, helmet in her hands. It wasn't noticed, but her knuckles turned white when they gripped the edge, as if it were a lifeline.

"Mommy!" Morgan whined, reaching for the helmet again. "I found that!"

"Oh, Morgan, this is… this is for when you're _older_."

"But I saw you! In that thing." Morgan jabbed her finger to point at its blue cranium. "What was that about?"

"Morgan. Please. Go wash your hands for dinner."

The girl scrambled to her feet, lip visibly protruding, but one stern look from her mother's stormy blue gaze and she rushed for the sink.

The smell of onions lingered in the kitchen air long after the dinner plates were fitted into the dishwasher rack. Pepper quietly excused to the living room. Morgan watched her receding backside, peering from colour pencils and paper in front of her. Drawing had become a hobby of hers, and over the years of constant practice, she became quite the master. Her Iron Man renderings were to be marvelled.

Morgan spied Pepper bending over the hole in the floorboards. She heard the scraping of metal on wood, a beat of silence, and then the scraping of wood on wood. The boards locked in place, Mom's next play was to excuse herself to her bed. _Don't stay up too late_, she warned before marching up the steps.

Morgan waited. By the glow of the overhead lamp, she waited an hour at the marble-topped island. Mom never returned.

_This was her chance_, thought Morgan, who set down the gold pencil and crept for the floorboard hole once again. She felt the edge with her fingertips again while her ears strained to hear any movement from one story above, any sign that her mother would rise from her slumber and catch her in the act. The wood loosened. Morgan eased it upwards, shifted it over, and laid it down on the corner of the rug. Something creaked. She whipped her head to face the stairs.

_Mom?_ But after seconds of stiff shoulders and bated breath, no feet padded down the steps.

Taking the blue curve into her palms, Morgan lifted the helmet back out and covered the hole again.

She forced her feet to rush up the stairs at the pace she usually would take. Every step made the helmet weigh more… or was that the anxiety? She never lied to her mother about something so big. A piece of a suit. Her dad's suits. A piece of her dad. _Daddy!_ The one thing Morgan wanted more in her life was to see her father again. To see him smile, to hear him speak, to feel his arms around her shoulders.

More than anything.

She missed out on a lot.

Everyday, she'd see her peers sprint down the bus aisle, down the steps, across the asphalt and leap into their fathers' arms. Morgan just sat in the green leather seat, squirming to get comfortable, until her long, dirt driveway came into view.

The metal was cool to the touch. Morgan rearranged her comforter to spread over her legs before spinning the helmet over in her hands. She stared deep into the shadowed bowl, a soft aqua blinking inducing a trance-like state. A pinprick of doubt nearly ruined her whole plan. She had half a mind to hasten down the stairs to return it to its hole.

Mind spinning out of her control, Morgan almost knocked the helmet off her lap.

One rallying thought kept her in line.

_Dad?_

With a tinge of hope elevating the vowel into a question.

She pulled the helmet down over her head.

* * *

Morgan had a secret. She never told anyone. The blue and gold helmet collecting dust underneath her bed was the only proof that she even knew anything at all.

Rhodey and Happy could be around as often as every day. They could offer her as much praise and as many gifts as they'd like. But they could never deliver the same sarcastic quips as the man in the video. They could never love her tons the way the man who tucked her in could. She loved them as much as a niece could but she could never compare the love they received with the wishes three-thousand she gave unto the man threading his fingers through her hair. _Every night_, he did. _Every night_, she smiled like the whole world had wished her good night. _Every night_, she closed her eyes with giggly grin, his funny threat to sell her toys bouncing around in her mind.

Morgan had a secret. She held it in her hands like a blue and gold jewel.

Leaning over the edge of her bed, she shoved it beside the toy boxes before adjusting the comforter, having it hang an inch off the ground to obscure the secret from view.

Morgan had a secret. It sat under her bed, already beginning to collect dust that night. She punched her pillow, tugged at the blanket to cover her shoulders, and reached over to flick off the light.

Darkness fell and Morgan's consciousness soon with it. From her lips, the faintest of tunes. from one of the helmet's recorded memories, escaped:

_You'll never know how much I love you._

_Please don't take my sunshine away._


End file.
